Ball-Watching on Defense can be a serious problem for youth and beginning players. "Look Away!" is a great call we've heard college and high school teams using in unsettled situations to get players to turn around and find a man to guard.

Being clear and concise with your players will get you much better results on the field than yelling uncertain terms like "Move!" and "Hustle!" from the sidelines over and over. Use this Lax Lingo so that they know exactly what you mean and what you want them to do.

"Look Away!" (From the Ball)

This call is simple and direct. "Look away!" tells your players from youth all the way to college to take their eyes off the ball and see what is going on in the middle.

It can be a terrifying thing to teach a young athlete to do in any sport. The ball scores the goals, so that's the only thing that matters, right? Definitely not true.

We've heard this call from the bench in some big time college games during slow breaks, after turnovers, after slides, etc. Use it any time there is an unsettled situation where one of the guys on the other team might have gotten open.

Here are 5 situations where you can use this Lax Lingo to direct your players from the sidelines.

EXAMPLES:

Figure 1.) Transition Situations- This happens quite often with younger players. Your midfielders do a good job of getting back in the "Hole" to play Defense, stopping the 4-on-3 Fast Break. But everybody is focused on the ball, and nobody picks up the new midfielders as they come into the play, leaving a man open in the middle.

"Look away, Tommy!" Red M2 needs to look away and match up. The ball is covered. No need to for all six Defenders to watch the ball. Make sure everybody else is covered.